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If you ask anyone in Gardenview who the most clumsy toon is, they’ll point at the fluffy craft who pours his orange juice everywhere except the cup it’s supposed to land in. If you ask them to name a second, they’ll direct you towards the “junior detective” speeding around the halls with reckless abandon and a gleeful disregard for anything in her way.
And a third? They’ll turn and search for this culprit, check the far seats and corners of the rooms. Maybe she’s with the others, maybe not. If she is, she’s sitting peacefully with her hands in her lap, a sweet smile on her face. Yes; Shelly doesn’t seem the type to belong to such a rowdy group of toons, and yet her reputation is indisputable.
It’s a problem. Enough that it’s earned her plenty of nicknames and lighthearted jabs. Glisten has even offered to give her ballet lessons to “find the center of her balance”. One time, Toodles innocently asked why Shelly’s legs looked like polka dots, to which Teagan hurriedly shushed her and pulled her away with an apologetic smile.
True; like the stippled shading in a newspaper comic, the canvas of her arms and legs are at all times dotted with dark bruises. Occasionally she stands from chairs and beds, but it’s more often that she falls.
It can’t be helped that she seems to have magnets in her limbs that repel the places they’re meant to be. Despite her affinity for stumbling on carpet edges and banging into door frames, dropping items and falling out of chairs - despite the countless bruises that color her body and the bandages on her knees, Shelly has a different perspective on the matter.
See, Shelly considers herself an expert at balancing.
Perhaps not in the physical world. But in her mind, she moves with a dancer’s grace.
The room is warm, a merry-go-round of overlapping voices and nauseating smells. They’re almost done, she tells herself, just a little longer and she can step away into the dark hallway. Let the cold springwater of silence wash over her, soften her edges like a pebble tumbling in a river current. They only make it to the second line in ‘Happy Birthday’ when Dazzle gives an uncharacteristically-mischievous grin, before he shoves his twin’s face into the cake.
Then it’s very, very loud.
Her shoulder is jolted in its socket as toons rush past her. The off-tune singing diverges into three separate rhythms, eventually melting into the chaos of the rest of the room. Laughter reverberates in her ear like a taunt.
It’s times like this, clutching her fist tightly in her pocket and forcing a smile, even as tears spring to the corners of her eyes, when she wonders if anyone feels the same. Like they’re alone in a room full of others. Like they’re constantly one step from a cliff’s edge. Teetering on an invisible tightrope with no beginning and no end, no breaks and no relief.
Peering over the yawning precipice, into the terrifying darkness below, into what keeps her going through the day and staring awake at night, Shelly grins with all the bravery of a rabbit or a fool. With one foot in front of another, she steps forward on the tightrope, muscles led by memory alone. Flashes of spotlights and cameras, black-boxes and clapping children, clipboards and expectations.
For with her years of recital in this routine, she is nothing if not a performer.
If you ask anyone in Gardenview for gossip, you’ll never hear the end of it. Days have grown repetitive since the shutdown of the education center, and so it only takes small sparks of conflict to ignite an inferno of whispers and rumors. Some delight in exchanging such tales, while others scorn the act of engagement altogether.
If you asked Shelly directly, she would avoid the question and brush it all off. It’s all a big misunderstanding, she would say. A lack of seeing eye-to-eye. But if you ask anyone else, they would tell you the truth; that Shelly and Sprout are, against everyone's expectations, fighting.
The mains - with one obvious exception - have a silent agreement to not talk to Dandy. An agreement so silent that Shelly wasn’t aware of its severity until Sprout catches her leaning over his shop counter in a fit of giggles.
See, Shelly doesn’t particularly like Dandy. Not the ‘Dandy’ that she knows now. She misses the one who used to play dinosaurs and run in the mud with her, who would hold her hand and sit with her after a long, loud day of filming. This is light years away from the Dandy of the present, who, when you stare into his eyes for too long, you fear seeing the other side of him. All of the toons are trapped in the depths of Gardenview, true; but the ‘old’ Dandy is sealed away somewhere far, far darker.
And yet. A tiny part of her hopes.
“Sprout doesn’t get it.” Shelly groans, falling back into the plush pillows on her bed. She wraps her fingers around her upper arms and moves her hands, back and forth, back and forth. “I don’t think he believes there’s anything good left in Dandy.”
Tisha hums absently, absorbed in her book. She’s perched in her usual spot, on the giant Stegosaurus beanbag between Shelly’s bed and her bookcase. “Perhaps. But I think he’s just upset to see you’re talking to him again. Worried for you, I mean. You’re a kind toon, Shelly… Dandy may take advantage of that.”
Shelly barely hears the last part of that. She sits up straight. “Upset that I’m talking to Dandy? What about Astro?” Her hands move faster, back and forth, back and forth. “He’s way closer to Dandy, but I don’t see Sprout giving him the cold shoulder!”
In response, Tisha gives a half-hearted shrug. “That’s because he’s Astro.” Like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
And so the hiccup between Shelly and Sprout lingers. It marinates, festers like an open wound. Shelly hasn’t done anything wrong so she doesn’t apologize. Sprout thinks he’s doing her a service by being angry over it. And things between them stay tense.
Like always, it’s something small that pushes her off the edge. That last little breeze that sends her tumbling over the careful precipice of reason.
It’s the halfway mark of their supply run quota and Shelly is barely standing upright. The garish lights of the elevator are unpleasant enough as is, but it’s exponentially worse when she’s seeing it in double.
In the stuttering flashes of her vision, Tisha looks at Shelly curiously. “Hey, Shelly. You alright?”
Shelly startles and blinks, trying to clear the noise in her vision, her buzzing head. “Oh! Yeah, yeah, just thinking!”
A polite smile stretches on Tisha’s face as she clasps her hands behind her back. “Ah, just know I’ve got your back, alright?”
Shelly grins, this time a bit fuller. “Heh, of course… And I’ve got you! Let’s do this!”
The line of rope trembles under her. But it’s too soon to lose her balance. It doesn’t matter that she’d spent the previous night calming down from a separate meltdown instead of sleeping. It doesn’t matter that Sprout is standing on the other end of the elevator, pretending he doesn’t hear any of the conversation at hand. It’s simply another instance in what’s becoming a common trend, where she and Sprout spend their assigned runs avoiding any and all interaction with each other. And it doesn’t matter. All that matters is staying upright. All that matters is making it through this run.
Her smile wavers soon after the elevator opens to flickering lights, then pitch darkness.
As Pebble bounds into the darkness, guided by the feedback from Vee’s mic check, the rest of them creep out in separate directions. Shelly opts to follow where she last saw Pebble go.
She jumps at the sudden voice behind her. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”
Shelly turns to see Vee standing with her eyebrow raised. The glow of Vee’s monitor always feels strangely grounding in blackouts like these. It’s childish but Shelly sometimes likes to stick by her side. Giggle at her bemused expression when Shelly compares her to one of those plug-in night lights.
“Yeah! I’m good, a bit tired - but nothing a nice nap can't fix!” Shelly smiles as wide as she can, until it hurts her cheeks. She hopes to sound cheerful but the inflection of her voice droops.
For some reason, Vee continues to stare. “Are you certain you don’t need us to go back up? I don’t want you getting hurt because you were too tired to react in time.”
Shelly’s heart races. Under her feet, the tightrope jumps. “Uh - nope! I’ll be fine. Nothing’s wrong.” Vee keeps staring, and before she can say anything else, Shelly blurts, “Good luck out there, okay? You got this!”
She spins on her heel and puts as much distance between her and Vee as she can. What is wrong with her? It shouldn’t be this difficult. They’ve all done runs after making poor sleep decisions, it’s not like anyone else struggles this badly. She can power through. And besides, the thought of turning even more attention on her makes her soul shrivel.
Shelly shakes her head, as if doing so will dislodge the clutter in her head, the hazy darkness around her. Her arms and legs tingle. Maybe she should’ve followed Vee, after all.
She eventually settles on a machine. It’s located frighteningly close to where Pebble is keeping the Twisteds busy, but Shelly would rather be the one to brush shoulders with the dangerous operation than the less-stealthy Vee.
As she spins the wheel of the machine, her mind drifts. The pitter of nearby footsteps and the heavy blanket of darkness could almost lull her to sleep. Unable to resist temptation, she rests her head on the cool glass of the machine, letting her eyelids droop for just a few peaceful moments.
It was only supposed to be for a moment. Her soul jumps out of her body as there’s a bark right in her ears.
Too-late she turns to see Pebble bounding towards her, a panicked look in his eyes, a sea of inky arms grasping at him from behind. He must’ve not noticed her here. If she had been awake, maybe she would have moved away in time.
She flinches into herself and shuts her eyes, bracing for the pain as they inevitably collide. Except it never comes. Instead, she hears a crunching sound in front of her. When she opens her eyes, the Twisteds are busy greedily grabbing at a sticky puddle of ichor on the ground, and Pebble is nowhere to be seen.
Shelly cranks the last fraction of the machine to its completion and stumbles away in the first direction she can, her mind foggier than before. In the darkness, she blindly fumbles her way down halls and around bends. By some miracle she finds the rest of her teammates, huddling near the elevator. They all turn to her with wide eyes.
“Shelly! Thank goodness you’re alright.” Tisha sighs in relief, pulling Shelly by the elbow to hide behind the boxes with the rest of them.
“What happened out there?” Vee asks, and Shelly shakily recalls Pebble’s death. A grim atmosphere always settles amongst the group whenever their distractor dies. They look to one another in a mix of dread and a quiet anguish, haunted by the knowledge that their happy little Pebble was currently suffering the painful respawn process.
“Oh, dear. I hope Sprout is alright.” Tisha looks into the darkness fearfully. “I believe he was fixing the final machine.”
Vee nods and taps her mic, broadcasting the faint outlines the free-roaming Twisteds. The group sits in a quiet suspense, all breathing a sigh of relief when there’s a distant “ding” and the rickety elevator door slides open.
It’s not long after that Sprout rolls up to the elevator with a grin on his face. “Phew! Hey guys! Sorry, had to run the whole way here.” He puts his hands on his hips and turns around to look out over the floor, standing at the edge of the elevator.
The other toons look to themselves in confusion. Vee rolls her eyes and pulls Sprout inside by the elbow. His eyes widen as the doors slam shut in his face. “W-wait, what?!” Sprout whirls around in disbelief. “But we don’t have everyone! Where’s Pebble?!”
Shelly cringes. “He’s gone.”
As Vee dryly recounts the events of the floor, Sprout fixes her with a look of disbelief. Then anger. And, as Vee trails off, the glare is pinned on Shelly.
“Sorry, but… How did Shelly mess that up?! She’s usually so good with machines!” Sprout asks, voice stretched thin. “How did this happen?!” His foliage bangs are tussled, strands sticking this way and that, dark bags under his eyes. None of them look too good after the stress of the last floor. Shelly cringes.
“I didn’t mean to… I’m really, really sorry.” She dips her head. “But… It doesn’t matter, right? I’m sure we can still make it to Floor 20! We’re practically-”
“Are you serious?” Sprout says.
Shelly goes quiet, her heart sinking. What?
Sprout steps closer, his eyes scrunched in pain. “No, it won’t ‘be okay’. You chose that machine close to Pebble. You knew that messing up would kill him.”
“What?” Shelly’s hands shake at her side as she stares into Sprout’s dark eyes, seeing her own shocked reflection in his pupils. “I didn’t mean to get him hurt!” Shelly protests, voice cracking. But Sprout just wouldn’t stop. Shelly watches in horror as he advances even closer.
“You never struggle with machines but you magically messed up right next to our vulnerable distractor- and you know what? Sure. I can excuse that. But the least you can do is own up to it. Don’t just play it off like-”
“I said I’m sorry!” Frustration and shame explode in Shelly’s gut as her own voice pierces in her ears. Her shout, unintentionally loud, bounces through the elevator like a gunshot.
“Okay, I know we’re all a bit stressed-” Vee looks up at Sprout in warning.
“Hey, let’s all calm down and-” Tisha steps between Sprout and Shelly.
“Let me finish what I was saying before shouting at me-” Sprout pushes past Tisha as he glares down at Shelly.
The elevator rings with noise, too much noise, the grating elevator doors screeching open, many voices buzzing over one another. But then there’s something above it all. A hot, burning hand closes in on her shoulder. A thousand searing knives stab at the point of contact between his skin and hers, even through the layers of her clothing, the surface of her skin and the muscles beneath boiling alive in the heat of Sprout’s touch. He looms above her, too close, too loud, too warm, too much.
Chest heaving, she shoves him away and runs past him out of the elevator, her tears finally spilling over. There’s nothing she can do right, not even a stupid little machine. She doesn’t want to be here anymore. She doesn’t want to be anywhere. Not here, not the painful respawn system, not on the surface.
It seems fate decides her place for her, however. The last thing she registers is a distant screech and a claw closing in on her from above, before her world goes white-hot with pain and a broken approximation of peace.
If you asked anyone in Gardenview how to describe respawn, they would say it hurts. If you asked further, they’d say it felt like dying. And further, they’d admit it was the feeling of skin being peeled from muscle, your body simultaneously stretched infinite and crushed flat, every strand of ‘you’ unspooled and sloppily wrapped back together before spitting you out, the new you, a lumpy patchwork of skin and ichor, into the cold confines of the infirmary, where Dandy’s faded smiles mocked you from the murals on the walls.
The pain is usually enough to keep Shelly down and in the infirmary beds for the remainder of the day. This time, however, she wakes from her fog of dreamless sleep and shoots upright. She can’t feel the pain from the action, so she keeps going. She throws the covers off. She runs to her bedroom.
Collapsing in her bed feels like nothing. Staring at the ceiling feels like nothing. Submerged head-deep in a thick numbness, Shelly drifts. Floating on an ocean of static and darkness. The silence of her room hums in harmony with the silence in her head.
Later - she’s not sure how much later, some part of herself still aware that time is passing, just not how much -, Tisha comes to her room. Shelly doesn't remember talking, but apparently whatever answers she gave were good enough. Tisha leaves her with a hug and a plate of leftovers from their dinner that night, apparently that Shelly had missed. Shelly stares at the plate after Tisha leaves, watching as it grows colder and colder even as she remains the same.
By the time her mind slowly returns to her, she registers that she’s laying flat on her back. The first wisp of thought drifting across her consciousness is a distant curiosity, of the fact that she can’t feel her own body.
She’s not cognizant enough to puzzle if this is a defect of respawn or something more, so she busies herself with lifting her hand and flexing her fingers. There is no resulting sensation, even as her palm creases with the movement.
As her mind stutters into motion, sparks to life like the beginning embers of a fire, she lets the unfeeling hand dangle mid-air above her. She should feel frightened. She should feel something, anything. And yet…
Shelly spreads her fingers. Against the black of her room, her yellow hand carves its awkward lines, child’s drawing of a star. The tips of her claws are a ladder of jagged edges - some blunt, some chipped, none matching its neighbor.
Sprout’s words replay in her head. He didn’t bother apologizing to her, and she didn’t want him to, and they both went on with their days. Well, Sprout probably had. But here Shelly was, laying in the dark, staring at her ugly hand and wondering if you could replace her with anyone else in the world and they would even notice.
What would they say if she disappeared one day? Would there be much to say at all? She isn’t particularly smart, she isn’t particularly pretty. In fact, Shelly feels she’s more of an eyesore than anything. An awkwardness follows her through life with the loyalty of a hound or a vengeful spirit, leaves her bumbling through conversations and receiving tight smiles and awkward, fleeting glances away. Yes; Shelly may very well dread talking to others just as much as they do talking to her.
Well, ‘dread’ is a strong word. Shelly doesn’t feel dread , not in the way she’s heard others describe it.
As she slowly lowers her arm to rest on her chest, the flame within her grows larger, hotter. Now that she’s considering it, she’s not confident that she’ll feel anything ever again. Her arm should be aching from holding it up for so long, but it's completely numb, as if the limb isn’t attached to her. The ichor that runs through her body feels like it’s turned to static, a nothingness that oozes lazy and slow. Her chest rises and falls with each breath, but it's rote, mechanical, a reflex of this borrowed vessel of hers. Her mind swims with thoughts, thoughts that she could never speak aloud because surely they’re horrible, they’re too sad , but- but—
Shelly breathes. In and out, in and out. The darkness swirls around her as she - no, the body that she is stuck in - sits up. It leaves her bed. It leaves her bedroom.
There’s a ‘click’. It’s black until it isn’t. White light, white tiles, white sink. The arms in front of her move on their own, and Shelly finds herself a captive audience to the show that unfolds before her, detached limbs the mechanical actors on the stage of her vision. They pull open cabinets and rummage around. They open another and throw items to the floor. The clattering sound of plastic on linoleum doesn’t quite reach Shelly. It’s fuzzy, distorted, like she’s underwater or hearing it broadcast through an ill-tuned radio. The arms reach to the bottom of the drawer and finally pull something from the depths.
A thin line of metal glints against mustard-yellow skin. It might feel cold, if Shelly were able to feel anything at all. She watches as the fingers flex, opening and closing the petite pair of scissors. They’re kept sharpened for the toons’ grooming needs, for those who care about their appearance. Who keep manicured lives, manicured nails.
With the scissors clutched at a wide open position, the left hand raises it to the right arm.
Plump skin dips at the point. Metal moves, slowly, and far away, Shelly feels . It’s barely a sensation at all, but there's an undeniable itch, a tickle at her skin, a small indication that this vessel is real. On the arm, a thin line of black slowly appears in the blade’s trail.
The hand moves down. This time it presses harder, and Shelly inhales because the pain is instant. The black line appears even sooner, beading up wetly, and the boundary between vessel and body thins by a fraction.
It’s working. With a fevered haste, the metal moves. Again, and again, and again, hacking away until the arm is smeared with black, until blood roars in her ears and a flame of desperation licks at her skin, until her nerves sear in the inferno of pure sensation, until she feels in control again, this is her body again -
Then, for a terrifying moment, the arm is frozen in place, and her heart drops because did she lose the helm again? For some reason, she’s stuck; despite her wanting to move, move, move - the arm holding the scissors is suspended mid-air. Helplessly, she flails, and panic flares up as she sees no response.
The arm is shaken roughly, and something metallic blips into her view for a split second. Shelly follows it with her eyes. Metal fingers, curled tightly around her elbow.
Black and green dips into her vision. A mouth is moving. But Shelly doesn’t hear anything, so she just stares. Some part of her gnashes and bellows against its cage, it wishes to writhe in frustration, to scream, to keep moving, to explode like a wild firework - but the embers of anger are dead. In the flickering soot, Shelly’s mind is blanketed by a cold fog once more.
Soon her world is dark. Well, darker than before.
A viridian glow drifts in and out of her face, and if she were any more present, she might get annoyed by it. For the time being, it's a background detail.
She’s shaken back into her body by a sudden burst of pain in her arm. Shelly hisses through her teeth. The neon green light is everywhere, it’s too close, tearing into her retinas, ripping her skull apart.
“Shelly?” Vee says to her, and oh God, this is real.
Shelly gulps down air and tries to say anything. Vee leans close and Shelly leans away, cringing from that awful glare. Tears prick at her eyes, at the light, at the pain, and she regrets ever yearning for sensation. She wants to return to the numb, the nothingness, marching in a vessel that does without feeling.
The light dims considerably and Shelly pants, suddenly able to hear herself again. Vee is inches from her, staring at her with a pinched frown. The green dot of her pupils dart around Shelly’s face, before squinting. Vee’s display dims by a few more lumens. “Shelly? Shelly? Can you understand me?”
In a miracle of bodily cooperation, Shelly tips her head in a clumsy approximation of a nod. Vee’s head sags in relief. “Oh thank God, I was about to get Sprout. Don’t scare me like that.”
Shelly’s breathing quickens again. “No- no, please don’t- don’t get – I can’t—“ She hiccups as hot tears spill over her cheeks.
“Hey, hey - alright! I won’t wake him up, just… Breathe, okay?” Shelly gasps and nods. She’s trying , but its so hard. Vee’s face hovers in the dark, a careful distance from Shelly as she speaks. “It’s just us. I’m right here.”
Shelly nods again. The concoction of sensations and anxiety brews a wicked storm in her twisting gut, her skin rippling uncomfortably, sticking to her body like a wetsuit. She tries to focus on other things. Something plush is beneath her, but not exactly soft, the comfort of a cot in a nurse’s office. In the dim halo of Vee’s light, she can barely catch the shape of the sleek furniture around them. The wall is lined with shelves of cables and air canisters. In the far corner sits a rack of cleanly-pressed suit jackets, and a vanity with a chair tucked below.
Shelly wrestles her breathing into something manageable. “Okay, I’m - I’m okay now.” She breathes a whistling sigh that rattles in her chest.
The pixels of Vee’s face rearrange themselves into a neutral expression. It’s careful, far more than Vee usually bothers to exhibit. “Shelly. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you less okay.”
Shelly’s heart catches in her throat as she stares at Vee. Her metal legs are kneeled near the edge of the bed, posture held with the tension of a pinched bowstring. It’s curious how the most self-assured toon can look so uncomfortable. “I know you don’t want me to grab Sp-… him, but -“
While she speaks, Vee’s eyes keep flickering downward. Shelly follows her gaze and immediately wishes she hadn’t.
The once-clean flesh of Shelly’s right arm looks like latticework. Shelly tries to take count but loses herself quickly. The criss-crossing tangle of black cuts are beaded with rows of glistening ichor, wet droplets lingering at the edges of the wounds, begging to spill at the slightest disturbance. A few are shallow. But most of them are really, really deep.
Looking is a reminder that they exist, and as Shelly marvels at the cuts gorged into her skin, she feels the ghost of every metallic swipe blossoming across her skin at once.
Hard fingers settle on her cheek - cold, cold, cold - and fix her gaze upward, back into the halo of green. Vee’s eyes are wide. “Hey, look at me, ‘kay? Eyes up here.”
Shelly stares back in wordless agreement. After a moment, Vee retracts her arm and stands. Shelly follows the green glow as it drifts across the room, then returns. The bed dips as Vee sits beside her.
Vee lifts a white case for Shelly to see. “I’m gonna clean these up for you. Okay? Just keep looking at me.”
The smell of stale alcohol and cotton fills the air. A gentle cloth blots over her arm and Vee murmurs an apology at her resulting whimper. The pixels of Vee’s brow furrow, and stay there.
Once, Vee’s eyes flicker over to Shelly’s other arm. “Shelly?”
Shelly makes an absent-minded noise. Winces as gauze fibres catch against her fresh wounds.
Vee hums in apology, then asks. “How frequently do you hurt yourself?”
Shelly startles. “Wh-what? I’ve never…” Vee looks directly at her while she speaks, and Shelly tapers off, her focus drifting.
Vee unwraps another roll of gauze as she speaks again. “You’ve never hurt yourself before?”
Shelly hesitantly nods.
“Okay. Good.” Something in Vee’s posture unwinds, but she’s still tense, focused on the task at hand. Overtaken by curiosity, Shelly glances down again to see a good portion of her arm, all the way to her elbow, stark-white with gauze. Her lower arm and wrist are still bare, the ugly criss-crosses of ichor an eyesore next to pristine bandages.
Vee snaps her metal fingers hurriedly. “Hey, I’m not done. Look up here.” Shelly corrects herself and Vee holds her gaze for a few moments before returning to her work.
Despite Shelly’s contentment to spend the rest of the night in silence, Vee speaks up again, her voice quiet. “Is this because of Sprout…? ”
It’s hard to push down the sudden lump in her throat. It would be so simple to say yes - after all, Sprout is the reason she finally lost her balance, took the long fall into the swirling darkness below her tightrope. But today was just one falter among a long lineup of stumbles on her tightrope. After all of her previous times plummeting, Shelly could at least predict the trajectory. She's accustomed to crashing somewhere safe, a dark corner of some abandoned room where she could finally break down in silence, or if she’s lucky, in tears under the solitude of her blankets. Instead, here she finds herself, kneeling on Vee’s bed, mind empty and covered in her own blood. This fall is something new and terrifying. Shelly isn’t sure where she is at all.
“No.” Shelly eventually says. “I just-“ She recalls the terrifying memory of being an audience member in her own head, noises around her like feedback from tinny speakers. “I wanted to make sure I was… real.”
Vee frowns at that. “What do you mean?”
The lump in her throat returns. There’s no way to explain it, so she doesn’t bother. Instead, she tips her head back. A wobbly smile creeps onto her face. “Y’know, Sprout was right about what he said today. I really can’t get anything right, can I?” She laughs wetly. “I’m used to feeling this way. I don’t know why it finally broke me today.”
Vee freezes mid-motion, staring at Shelly like she’s something incendiary, something both fragile and volatile. “Feeling… feeling what way?”
“Like I’m… I don’t know. Broken, I guess. Invisible.” Shelly wants to sound angry but there’s no actual heat in her voice. She’s still buried in the soot. “I know something’s wrong with me, I don’t need him to spell it out for me but - I can only pretend for so long before I’m just… done.”
Shelly shuts her eyes to the dim world around her, grounded on nothing. In the darkness she could be floating or sinking. Rising or falling.
It’s cold, without the heat of her flame. Shelly shivers.
“Shelly.”
She opens her eyes.
The bright green glow reels her soul into her body like an anchor. Vee hovers closer than before, eyes blown wide again. “Shelly, have you told anyone about this?”
Shelly shakes her head.
With a deep breath, Vee clutches up both of Shelly’s hands, gripping them with a fervor. “Look. I’m not going to pretend that I’m great with this - ‘feeling’ stuff. But whenever you’re thinking this way, don’t go and grab the scissors. You find one of us to talk to. Cosmo or Sprout. Tisha, Brightney - hey, if you can tolerate my company then consider me a candidate, too.” Vee squeezes hard. “Just - don’t keep this to yourself anymore.”
Shelly lowers her eyes. Where her hands are clutched in Vee’s, her arms stretch before her; one covered in scales, the other in tight bandages. It seems Vee had finished her job after all. “Why?”
The cold fingers wrap around hers tightly. “Because we care about you.”
It’s nothing heartfelt or revolutionary; it’s simple and to the point. It’s Vee. Yet, something about that causes a slow, tepid trickle to seep back into Shelly’s cold bones. Heat stings at the corners of her eyes where unexpected tears spring forth. “ Why ?” She repeats, her voice trembling.
Vee’s cold thumbs rub at the back of Shelly’s hands. “Oh, Shelly.” Vee sighs, a light indignation to her voice. “You’re always there for us. What makes you think we wouldn’t be there for you?”
And just like that, the warmth spills over and Shelly’s watching the tears roll down her cheeks, but this time it isn’t fire and devastation, it’s the embrace of the sun on the back of your neck, the leftover glow of a screen that's been left on for too long. She wants to curl as far into it this heat as she can.
Vee’s voice is stilted. “Um. Hey. Do you… want a… hug?”
Despite herself, Shelly lets out a small laugh. She screws her eyes shut and nods.
Vee soon speaks into her shoulder. “But I’m serious. You really need to tell someone else about this. If you can’t do it, I will.”
It goes unsaid, but Shelly still recoils at the implication. “Please don’t tell Sprout.”
“He’s gonna know something’s up with you. I know you two are fighting but he still has that freakish sense for when his friends are hurting.”
Shelly grimaces. Vee isn’t wrong. “I don’t care, just… please. Not him.”
Vee is quiet, but she continues drawing slow circles on Shelly’s back with her hand, and it’s nice. Shelly lets her mind go blank, this time not with a cold static, but with the warm lull of a beckoning drowsiness.
Vee keeps her promise, technically. Shelly’s secret is kept safely from Sprout, but she doesn’t get off entirely scot-free. Cosmo and Vee swear up and down they won’t treat her any differently, but even so, things around her change.
“Ugh. Let me handle him this time.” Vee steps in front of Shelly like a shield, bravely interrupting Shrimpo’s tirade.
“Has anyone seen the shears?” Goob calls from the bathroom. Looey sounds relieved as he says to check the medical room, where Cosmo has started keeping the ‘sharps’.
One day Dandy walks up to her with a smile. “Shelly! Care to help a pal collapse some old boxes?” One hand is planted on his hip, and the other hand waves a boxcutter in the air.
“Wait! I can help!” Cosmo jumps up. Which leads to the hilarious scene of the short toon buried head-deep in a stack of boxes, hacking away with the grace of a lumberjack or a murderer in a low-budget slasher.
To her surprise, it’s Sprout who apologizes first. He seems ashamed. And maybe a bit too keen. A small part of her thinks the other mains pressured him into making amends, but she’s comforted by the knowledge that Sprout is always one to listen to his own heart above all. Their lengthy conversation ends with a crushing hug and a promise to never let anything - or anyone - divide them like that again. (Shelly swears that Sprout keeps stealing glances at her when she isn’t looking, and she worries that Vee may have been right after all, but it’s possible she’s just being hyper-aware.)
Although most toons haven’t commented on it, Glisten is fixated on her new wardrobe. “I know you’ve been obsessed with the sleeves lately, but darling, we could do so much better than that.” Shelly only barely dodges a session in Glisten’s wardrobe, and the bullet that would be Glisten uncovering her bandaged arm.
Speaking of, Vee insists on helping Shelly redress the wounds daily. Cosmo would never invade her privacy to such a degree, which is perhaps why Vee does it. Even as Vee tries to play it off as a helpful act, Shelly’s almost positive it’s so that Vee can check for new wounds. It’s a very ‘Vee’ thing to do, but if Shelly pushes aside her bitterness, she has to admit she would do the same thing for anyone else.
Surprisingly, the scars are healing up nicely. Cosmo unearths a tube of scar cream and tells her to ignore the expiration date. And besides the times where Vee scolds Shelly for picking absently at the scabs, the lines don’t gain any new neighbors.
Shelly’s balancing act is still there, but it feels less lethal for her to fall off the edge. The cliff has been reduced to a hillside. Now whenever Shelly feels herself tumbling down, she talks to Cosmo. About anything. Cosmo probably wants her to talk about her feelings, or about the new coping skills he’s been teaching her, but it’s mostly dinosaur facts. He seems to enjoy it well enough, so many of their nights are spent together in the kitchen; Cosmo stirring batter for tomorrow’s desserts and Shelly roaming her beloved mental library for a while.
Sometimes, Shelly goes to Vee. Who swiftly redirects her to Cosmo.
“I’m not good with the feelings stuff,” Vee claims, guiding her to the infirmary with one hand on Shelly’s back. She almost sounds apologetic. For some reason, though, this doesn’t deter Shelly. A part of Shelly yearns to discover where her and Vee overlap. How many of Shelly’s struggles, once thought an isolating fact of her life, may not be so unique to her after all. Vee is nothing if not stubborn, but Shelly is nothing if not curious. The two of them end up complimenting each other better than expected.
It’s nice, having people to fall back on. Shelly didn’t realize how much she missed out on when she was trying not to plummet all the time, and she finds herself relaxing. It’s easier to follow conversations and laugh. She discovers a few other toons who like to listen to her talk, and vice versa. Finn and her bounce conversation off each other so easily that she feels the closest to comfortable she ever has. For the most part, things are good.
One night, Shelly sits up in bed, half-awake. The other half of her is still shrouded by the smoky trails of her dream, a blur of numbness and metal. In her dream she had been slowly turning to stone, and no matter how hard she hacked into her arm, nothing came out.
Darkness laps at her vision in inky waves, threatening to embrace her in an ocean of a million unfeeling arms. She stumbles in a trance, using all of her willpower, her dwindling control to not look down at her vessel.
Her destination soon befalls her. She perhaps knocks, or says something. It’s impossible to tell with no hearing and a vision glued firmly up.
An amount of time passes, and then in the night sky there’s a glowing star. Shelly has to squint even after it dims. Vee’s mouth moves, but Shelly still can’t hear, so after a moment she feels herself being gently pulled inside. Where the rest of her body is tingling with unfeeling static, Shelly feels. The static recedes, replaced with the pleasant rumbling of a robotic voicebank. Firm fingers slot into the space between cracked claws. Cold metal rests on warm skin. Her warm skin.